The other release is an oldie. The first album that I ever released back in 1986 on cassette is now out on vinyl (my first ever vinyl release) called Point of Arrival.

This release is a bit different then my current output, more in line with the so called "Berlin school" of music (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Micheal Hoeing, etc), but from a west coast point of view. You can pick it up at the following urls:http://boomkat.com/vinyl/543940-loren-nerell-point-of-arrival

Loren Nerell creates a masterful release of deep ambient with Slow Dream, field recordings from the world of sleep. On his seventh solo release, Nerell's four lengthy tracks are all-encompassing sonic environments primarily forged from extremely processed location recordings made during his trips to Bali. Rich drones and shimmering highlights skirt over the organic textures, processed and layered into subtle, delicate resonant spaces. Glowing, amorphous drifts of sound create the impression of traveling along the supple contours of subterranean passageways. This slow dream takes ethereal shape as an exotic but compelling atmosphere that hovers between the waking and sleep state. When experienced at a lower volume and left to repeat play over the course of a few hours, the transportive effect of this soundscape is especially powerful and mind-altering.

"A glowing, amorphous cloud of spine-tingling sound. Two musicians come to mind when listening: Jon Hassell, who popularized Fourth World music, and Brian Eno, the father of Ambient music. While sounding nothing like the work of either artist, Loren Nerell's music takes inspiration from both of them. His music is evocative of mist-covered mountains and slow-motion waterfalls, so it owes something to Hassell. But it also pays tribute to the patient genius of Eno, with its endlessly evolving atmosphere, in which there is no beginning or end, only the present. Djam Karet founder Chuck Oken, Jr. describes Nerell's music as a 'sound pool' that the listener is immersed in. His words couldn't be more accurate. To describe ambient or atmospheric music as 'a soundtrack' is clichéd, but it's really the best way to talk about Nerell's work." - FORCED EXPOSURE

Along with his ongoing solo releases, Nerell has 30+ years of ethno music studies and performing and recording with Gamelan Ensembles. Nerell has collaborated with pioneers in the electronic, ambient and new music fields including Steve Roach, A Produce, Kronos Quartet and Paul Haslinger. He continues to compose and record in Los Angeles, California. His 2006 Terraform collaboration with Steve Roach is available on Projekt (PRO233).

Loren writes:The field recordings on Slow Dream are from Bali and Java and have been mutated using various audio software plug-ins. I processed the sounds by slowing them down, turning them around, filtering them, and other various techniques beyond the point of recognition. The opening track is taken mostly from a 2003 field recording of a rare gamelan performing at a festival in a small village in Bali. This 20-minute recording was manipulated and then stretched out to around 6 hours in length. I then took the most interesting parts and layered them at various speeds to create the higher-pitched parts of the track. The rest of the sounds are from other mutated field recordings or sounds generated from my modular synth. Most of the material I use to process are from gamelan performances, but anything is fair game: insects, sounds of temple ceremonies, voices, and other instruments in my process. I started using some of these methods on The Venerable Dark Cloud but began to use them extensively on Taksu and also on Terraform. My intention was to make sounds that were from a gong's perspective (in Indonesia, a gong in a gamelan is thought to have its own spirit.) My thinking was if a gong is a thinking spirit, it wouldn't think in terms of a human. Instead, the gong would think in terms of gamelan sounds. So I took field recordings I had made of various gamelans and started processing them in an attempt to create something like what I imagined a gong would think. This technique has become part of my process to create new sounds.

New from the excellent archival imprint Forced Nostalgia comes this vinyl edition of a super-rare 1986 tape by a sound designer at Oberheim Electronics, Loren Nerell.

A contemporary of Steve Roach and collaborator with Steve Reich, Kronos Quartet, Paul Haslinger and L. Subramaniam, Nerell has a richly varied musical background including research into analog synthesis, and the micro-tonal techniques of Harry Partch, complemented by his studies in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology. The bat-eared Forced Nostalgia imprint have shrewdly selected his debut release - an enigmatic and hypnotic side sonically and spiritually located somewhere between Craig Leon's 'Nommos', 23 Skidoo's 'Urban Gamelan' and Tangerine Dream's 'Rubycon' - for reissue.

Utilising studio skills as a sound designer at Oberheim Electronics, together with his masters studies in Balinese ceremonial music, Nerell created an enveloping rhythmelodic experience with the help of contributors Steve Roach, Richard Burmer and Ann DeJarnet. From the interweaving tribal rhythm sequences of opener 'Eidolon', the album dilates to cover the haunting chorales of 'Soundscape' and rippling machine minimalism of 'Matrix', before the lushly soporific synth drift of 'Growth', conceived with assistance from Steve Roach. Berlin school themes define the re-entry into expansive cyberdelic B-side 'Waves of Time'. Polyphonic keys and simulated celestial winds carry us across cyberreal topographies accompanied by chanting shamans to then-advanced (now charmingly evocative) holo-zones of lucidly organised dreamscapes. It's a vivid glimpse of a future past, re-implanted in the present and highly recommended to all sonic time-travellers.

Thanks Forest. The cover is an actual photo my friend Sander Wolff took of a fake Oberheim synth I made from thrown away parts that I collected while working at Oberheim back in the mid 1980s. No real synths were harmed in the making of this album cover.

I got "Slow Dreams" yesterday and have listened twice. I am really enjoying this and am sure it will get many more plays in the coming days. BTW, I bought this along with Roach and Serries "Quiet Music". They are great companion pieces.

Logged

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing.